Istanbul Trivia
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46 free Istanbul trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Istanbul has been Byzantium, Constantinople and capital of four empires, and it is still the only major city that sits on two continents. This quiz starts with the Greek colonists of 657 BC and works through Constantine's New Rome, the Fourth Crusade, Mehmed II dragging his fleet over a hill in 1453, Suleiman's architect Sinan, the last sultan's exile and the 1930 law that made the name official. The landmarks get their due: Hagia Sophia and its changing status, the Blue Mosque's six minarets, Topkapı and Dolmabahçe, the Grand Bazaar's 4,000 shops, the Galata Tower and its legendary glider, the Basilica Cistern's Medusa heads, the Maiden's Tower, the Bosphorus bridges and the Marmaray tunnel. There are questions on Galatasaray versus Fenerbahçe, the 2005 Champions League final, the Orient Express, gecekondus, yalıs and the city's famous street cats. Easy questions ask which strait the city straddles and what the Blue Mosque is; hard ones want Orban's nationality, the founding year of Galatasaray High School and what the Grand Bazaar first sold. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its monuments, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Turkey and Ancient Rome quizzes next.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Istanbul lies on the strait between the Black Sea and which smaller inland sea?
The Sea of Marmara
The Sea of Marmara sits between the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, so every ship sailing between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean passes through the middle of Istanbul.
Q 02Which city replaced Istanbul as Turkey's seat of government in 1923?
Ankara
Ankara had been the headquarters of the Turkish national movement during the war of independence, while Allied forces occupied the old capital, and the new Republic made it the seat of government in 1923.
Q 03Istanbul began in the 7th century BC as Byzantium, a colony founded by which people?
Greeks
Greeks from Megara founded Byzantium; one legend says an oracle sent them to settle 'opposite the land of the blind', meaning earlier colonists across the strait who had missed the better site.
Q 04By tradition, what did Constantine the Great name the capital he dedicated on the Bosphorus in 330?
New Rome
New Rome is the name tradition gives, but the one that stuck was Constantinople, 'Constantine's city', which his own coinage came to carry.
Q 05The name 'Istanbul' is commonly held to derive from a Medieval Greek phrase meaning what?
To the city
To the city: Greek speakers said eis tḕn Pólin, 'to the City', when they meant going to Constantinople, the one city that needed no name, and the phrase is thought to have become Istanbul.
Q 06Which Byzantine dynasty retook Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261?
Palaiologos
Palaiologos: Michael VIII Palaiologos's general Alexios Strategopoulos slipped into the city in July 1261, ending the Latin Empire, and the dynasty ruled the restored empire until 1453.
Q 07Which crusade was diverted in 1204 to sack Constantinople and set up the Latin Empire?
The Fourth
The Fourth Crusade set out to win back Jerusalem but was diverted, sacking Christian Constantinople in April 1204 and setting up a Latin Empire there; it never reached the Holy Land.
Q 08After taking Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II claimed which title?
Caesar of Rome
Caesar of Rome, or Kayser-i Rûm, was the title Mehmed II took, arguing that whoever held the emperors' old capital was heir to the Roman Empire itself.
Q 09During the 1453 siege, how did the Ottomans get ships past the chain blocking the Golden Horn?
Hauled them overland
Hauled them overland: Mehmed had the ships dragged on greased logs over the hill behind Galata and launched into the Golden Horn behind the chain, bypassing it entirely.
Q 10The gunfounder who cast a giant bombard for the Ottoman siege of 1453 is usually described as what nationality?
Hungarian
Hungarian is the usual description of Orban, the gunfounder who first offered his skills to the Byzantine emperor; when Constantinople could not meet his price, he sold them to the sultan instead.
Q 11Who was the chief architect of Suleiman the Magnificent's reign, designer of the Süleymaniye?
Mimar Sinan
Mimar Sinan was drafted into the Janissaries and built military bridges and fortifications before turning to architecture; as Suleiman's chief architect he designed the Süleymaniye, finished in 1557.
Q 12Which Turkish state service formally retired the name Constantinople in 1930?
The post office
The post office: a 1930 postal law made İstanbul the official name, one Turks had long used in everyday speech, and Turkey began pressing other countries to drop Constantinople too.
Q 13In 1922 the last Ottoman sultan slipped out of Istanbul into exile aboard a warship from which country?
Britain
Q 21The palace name Topkapı means what in Turkish?
Cannon Gate
Cannon Gate: the name passed to the palace from a seaside pavilion by that gate which burned down; before that it was simply the 'New Palace', as opposed to the Old Palace at Beyazıt Square.
Q 22The Grand Bazaar's Turkish name, Kapalıçarşı, translates as what?
Covered Market
Covered Market is the literal meaning, after the roofed streets that shelter its thousands of shops; Turks also call it Büyük Çarşı, the 'Grand Market', which matches its English name.
Q 23The Grand Bazaar's core began in 1455/56 as a hall for trading which goods?
Textiles and jewels
Britain's battleship HMS Malaya carried Mehmed VI away on 17 November 1922, sixteen days after the Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate; he died in exile in Sanremo in 1926.
Q 14Which future president of Turkey rose to national prominence as mayor of Istanbul from 1994?
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected mayor of Istanbul in March 1994 for the Welfare Party and became prime minister in 2003 and president in 2014; his AKP lost the mayoralty to Ekrem İmamoğlu in 2019.
Q 15What is a native or resident of Istanbul called in English?
Istanbulite
Istanbulite is the English word, while Turks say İstanbullu; Turkish treats dotted İ and dotless I as different letters, which is why the city's name is properly written İstanbul.
Q 16Hagia Sophia was completed in AD 537 under which Byzantine emperor?
Justinian I
Justinian I commissioned it after the Nika riots of 532 and dedicated it in 537; Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles gave it a pendentive dome over what was then the world's largest interior space.
Q 17Before becoming a mosque again in 2020, Hagia Sophia spent 85 years as what?
A museum
A museum from 1935 under the secular republic, Hagia Sophia went back to Muslim worship in July 2020 after a court annulled the decree that had made it one.
Q 18The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is popularly known by the name of which colour?
Blue
Thousands of İznik tiles and painted floral motifs in blue give it the nickname; Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa built it for Ahmed I, facing Hagia Sophia.
Q 19The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is unusual for having how many minarets?
Six
Folklore says the architect misheard the sultan's request for 'altın' (gold) minarets as 'altı' (six), a number until then unique to the mosque at Mecca.
Q 20Topkapı Palace was the Ottoman administrative centre until the court moved to which palace in 1856?
Dolmabahçe
Dolmabahçe, finished in 1856 on the Bosphorus shore, gave Sultan Abdülmecid I the European-style palace he wanted in place of medieval Topkapı, which kept only the treasury, library and mint.
Mehmed II's Cevâhir Bedestan, the 'Bedesten of Gems', opened in 1461 as a hall for trading textiles and jewels; it was endowed to the charitable foundation of the Hagia Sophia mosque.
Q 24Istanbul's Spice Bazaar is known in Turkish by the name of which land?
Egypt
Egypt gives the Mısır Çarşısı, the 'Egyptian Bazaar', its name: built in the 1660s beside the New Mosque, it is said to have been paid for with taxes from Ottoman Egypt, and it sold the spices shipped from there.
Q 25The Galata Tower was built in 1348 as a watchtower by colonists from which Italian city?
Genoa
Genoa's colonists built it in 1348 as the Christea Turris, the Tower of Christ, at the highest point of their walled trading colony of Galata; the Ottomans later used it as a prison and fire lookout.
Q 26Istanbul's Basilica Cistern is famous for column bases carved with whose head?
Medusa
Medusa heads carved on reused Roman blocks prop up two columns in the cistern's north-west corner, one of them upside down; where the blocks came from is unknown.
Q 27The Maiden's Tower on its islet off Üsküdar is also known by the name of which figure from Greek myth?
Leander
It is also called Leander's Tower, after the Hero and Leander legend that properly belongs to the Dardanelles; another tale has a princess locked there to dodge a prophesied snakebite, killed by an asp in a fruit basket.
Q 28The first Bosphorus Bridge was renamed in 2016 after what event?
A failed coup
A failed coup: rebel soldiers blocked the bridge on the night of 15 July 2016, and later that month it was renamed the 15 July Martyrs Bridge for those killed resisting them.
Q 29The Marmaray, opened in 2013 beneath the Bosphorus, was the first rail link between which two regions?
Thrace and Anatolia
Thrace and Anatolia, Turkey's European and Asian halves, were first joined by rail when the Marmaray tunnel opened in 2013, four years late after digging at Yenikapı uncovered Byzantine-era remains.
Q 30The Orient Express from Paris ended its journey at which Istanbul station, built in 1890?
Sirkeci
Sirkeci, on the European shore, was built in 1890 as the Orient Express's eastern terminus; Haydarpaşa, across the water, was the terminal for trains heading on into Asia.